CHILLS AND THRILLS
10 page-turners to delight crime fiction fans.
JUST like the mill wheel at the heart of her second spine-chilling novel, author Sandra Ireland’s life has come full circle.
The divorced mum-of-two, who feverishly wrote stories in her childhood but, embarrassed, hid them beneath her bed, has followed a tortuous trail to publication.
Her debut, Beneath The Skin, hit book shops in 2016. Bone Deep is her second novel, with the publishing rights already sold in Germany and the US. Two further books are on the way.
They have been a long time coming, but Sandra says every step of her rich and varied life – from college drop-out and hippy crofter, to heraldic artist, baker, newspaper correspondent and carer – has been grist to the mill.
The Edinburgh-based writer tells iN10: “I couldn’t have written about the things I have written about when I was younger.
“You have to have experience and go through all that emotional stuff – divorce and bereavement – to find some sense in what you write about.”
The turning point came when Sandra, 56, was awarded a CarnegieCameron Scholarship to study for a Master’s degree in English and creative writing.
She helped support her studies by working as a cleaner at her local Co-op.
Her dedication paid off. She graduated with distinction in 2014 and had her debut novel under her belt soon after. Sandra says: “When I was young it was never a possibility that I could be a professional writer.
“It wouldn’t have gone down well with my family.
“They were very grounded and practical and I was quite an imaginative child.
“They never really knew quite what to do with me.
“After school I went to university, dropped out and went off to Ireland with my boyfriend and led a hippy lifestyle and had my children.
“We eventually divorced and I wanted to go back to university so went as a mature student at 46. At that point my mother had passed away. I started to write fiction as a way of coping with grief.
“But university became one of the best times of my life.”
The other was the publication of her debut.
“I was shell-shocked because it is a dream to have your book published.
“It felt like it was happening to somebody else, but with this second book it feels very real”
In themes that ripple through the ages, Bone Deep is a taut, contemporary psychological thriller about love, betrayal, female sibling rivalry and bone grinding, blood curdling murder.
Providing a sinister backdrop is the creaking, menacing presence of a disused watermill where, long ago, tragedy befell love-rival sisters.
And it is a story that grapples responsibly with modern-day issues such as mental health and dementia.
Sandra, who was a guide and a Creative Scotland Writer in Residence at the National Trust for Scotland’s A-listed Barry Mill in Angus, explains: “I had Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy Of The Scottish Border, with all the Border ballads in it.
“I was enthralled by the ballad of The Cruel Sisters. When I got the job at Barry Mill I remembered it again. I put the two things together and came up with the story.
“The Cruel Sisters fall out over a man and the jealous older one pushes the younger one into the mill pond. I thought I would update that, give it a modern setting, but have the echoes of the old story coming through.
“I knew where the plot would start and end but I was always twisting it. Sometimes the characters have a life of their own and it changes in unusual ways. Mac – one of the main characters – changes quite a lot throughout the book. There is a slow unravelling of her mental state.
“Trying to get into the characters’ minds was interesting,” reveals Sandra, who cared for her father – a dementia sufferer – until he passed away recently.
“You have to be aware and responsible when you are broaching subjects such as mental health.”
Sandra has already completed her third fiction, set in a scrapyard, and she is milling over the fourth. She reveals: “I have phobia about scrapyards,so you can see where that is going.
“My fourth book is going to be about the sandwiched generation – people caring for children and their elderly parents at the same time.
“The scary thing is we become the parents for everybody.”
Sandra’s career may have been fermenting for some time. But she is proving she has what it takes. And now she is rising to the literary challenge.